DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Shaun Marcum is so far along the recovery stage from elbow surgery that he appears to be past the worry stage.
While his teammates had a day off, Marcum and catcher John Buck were on the job at the Blue Jays minor league complex as the two participated in an exhibition game. Marcum went 32/3 innings, throwing 58 pitches against the Phillies' triple-A team.
When a club is concerned about the physical well being on one of its star hurlers, there's a flock of faces in attendance.
But on a chilly Tuesday afternoon, the bigwigs in attendance clocking Marcum's progress were limited to pitching coach Bruce Walton and head trainer George Poulis, which is a sign that major worries about Marcum's elbow are more or less a thing of the past. It will always be an issue, but it's fading.
Marcum, for his part, doesn't think about the elbow at all, and Tuesday concentrated on perfecting his two changeups -- his two-seamer and his four-seamer -- which complement his two-seam and four-seam fastballs.
"After the second inning I shook off John a couple of times to work on some changeups," said Marcum, who is a leading candidate to be the club's opening day pitcher April 5 against the Rangers in Texas.
"My two-seam changeup was good, I was locating that. But the ones that were hit were four-seam changeups that I hung a little bit so I wanted to work on that. Other than that my arm felt great and my body felt good and I'm ready to make the next one."
While getting in his work is the main point of the exercise, Marcum said that throwing against minor leaguers has its disadvantages.
"It's hard to set these guys up," Marcum said about his pitching sequence to each batter.
"They were swinging at everything for the most part. The changeups, some of them don't have that type of bat speed where it speeds them up a bit (in their swing) and they can get out in front and hit the ball on the barrel. But the results, whatever it may be (three hits, two runs, no walks, four strikeouts), it's not that big of a deal, especially a minor-league game."
To date, Walton has liked what he has seen.
"The main thing we accomplished was we got to 60 pitches and that's huge, four innings, up and down four times. That was our main goal today," Walton said.
"His location was great and we brought the cutter out today and got some strikeouts on it. That was another huge step for us.
"We still watch (his elbow). We still see how fast he recovers and what we can do on our work days.
"Right now our work days (side sessions) are fairly limited. We are taking a conservative route on our work days with him so he is really fresh when his start comes."
MIKE.RUTSEY@SUNMEDIA.CA
